


Lines of Sight

by Bronte



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 04:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1455952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bronte/pseuds/Bronte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His eyes examine the mirror image of a man he’d seen only in passing, in reflective glass and in rear view mirrors. For he was not allowed to see, to be seen, a double blind on his own very existence. He sees his own reflection now, his eyes and hair exposed in the glass that holds the image of a man superimposed like a floating ghost. </p><p>Post Captain America: The Winter Soldier</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lines of Sight

The Soldier.

That is what he is, and the thought wars against him. He is a weapon, and he keeps his strength withheld.

Two factions fighting on technological displays and historic banners, and within.

The combat reaches a fever pitch as he passes through the exhibits, his eyes ~~examining~~ drinking in the mirror image of a man he’d seen only in passing, in reflective glass and in rear view mirrors. For he was not allowed to see, to be seen, a double blind on his own very existence. He sees his own reflection now, his eyes and hair exposed in the glass that holds the image of a man superimposed like a floating ghost.

The Soldier is a ghost.

The Soldier can dissolve into the darkness, and he stands in the dim lights of the exhibit. The Soldier can absorb information in a matter of seconds, and instead he stands staring for hours at a man that breathed some seventy years ago.

_1917 – 1944_

His eyes dart from feature to feature, stopping only to compare said feature with his own. The resemblance is uncanny except where this man smiles, the Soldier gapes. He ~~schools his expression~~ doesn’t bother trying to hide his expression anymore.

Mission parameters don’t often change, or at least not to his knowledge.

He is starting to understand that his knowledge is defective at best.

He tears his eyes away from this ghost and stares up at the banner that lines the end of the exposition, huge and garish and as ~~the Mission~~ ~~Steve Rogers~~ ~~Captain America~~ Steve gazes along the sightlines of the ceiling, the connective tissues start falling together like shreds of shrapnel and glass.

The Soldier understands that if a mission goes awry, he is to report to the nearest safe house as indicated in his dossier and wait for his handlers to retrieve him, and he stays in the exhibit for another 2.6 hours. The Soldier is to report for maintenance and cryogenesis after a mission is complete, and he shuffles through the streets of the city instead. He doesn’t know its name, but he deciphers its patterns, its nuances soon enough. He pauses in front of a storefront and stares at the television unit and its screen bleeds with images of burning buildings and debris.

The subtitles careen across the bottom of the screen.

_dredging the Potomac, extremely sensitive intel, Captain America found on the water’s edge_

The Soldier doesn’t experience emotions as he has never had need of them, and he’s feeling them now. The Soldier doesn’t know what they mean.

He chooses a different abandoned building to spend the morning now that the sun is rising behind the charred remains of S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. The Soldier doesn’t know how to take care of himself as he has always been maintained by a team of officers appointed to do so. He doesn’t know how to brush his teeth, but he chooses not to ignore the impulse to swill a mouthful of bottled water through his teeth. He doesn’t know how to how to keep his prosthetic in working condition, not with the damage that it sustained barely three days prior, but he does know how to dress wounds and keep the infection from settling into his veins. The lesions to his abdomen seep through the dressings as he sleeps, and the skin that was never meant to be exposed to water aches so deeply that he has to chew paracetamol tablets to keep from wincing in his attempt to blend as he walks through the late afternoon crowds.

The Soldier kills for the materials that he requires, and he steals the required pharmaceuticals from an empty chemist’s in the nighttime. He spends the rest of the week holed up in a fore closured home in the suburbs suffering from the effects of the penicillin that never quite agreed with his system. He doesn’t know how he knows this, doesn’t know when he starts ingesting them to begin with, but he ~~knows~~ remembers now. He remembers nearly losing his big toe in a hoist accident shortly before enlisting, remembers being treated with a drug newly commercialised for infections as bad and as neglected as his, remembers spending days heaving into the wastebasket and a steady palm between his shoulder blades.

When the worst of the infections have passed, the Soldier leaves the home just as he found it and destroys the physical evidence that had accumulated. His prosthetic doesn’t react as effectively as it should be, but this doesn’t stop him from appropriating a non-descript vehicle from a car park the next evening and taking the I-95 to the New Jersey Turnpike. He doesn’t pay the tolls and he doesn’t have any money. He stops only once to siphon gas.

New York City strikes him as both familiar and alien. He notes that this could be for several reasons. Cranes dot the skyline, reconstructing broken buildings and restoring older ones. He heads to Brooklyn first.

The Soldier doesn’t amble aimlessly, and he does just that through Prospect Park, passed Green-Wood to Coney Island.

He knows this place.

He knows it well.

He spends his next evening holed up in the library, gleaning every possible sliver of information pertaining to him that he can find. He scrolls through columns of critical essays, flips through pages of encyclopaedias. He takes breaks only to do his own reconnaissance on H.Y.D.R.A. now that its every rivet of information is available on the internets.

The Soldier should have returned to his handlers by now, and he chooses instead to walk the streets of Brooklyn in the nighttime, headless to instruction. The Soldier has never known what it is like to act on his own accord and it is both alarming and liberating. He picks the lock of a newspaper dispenser and glances down at the front page, absorbs the image of Natalia Romanova as she storms from an intelligence hearing and scans the article. It speaks of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers and he flips three more pages until he finds the face of ~~Captain America~~ ~~the Mission~~ Steve staring back. He’s missing a patch of hair near his temple from a head wound, but this is the only weakness he can discover.

The Soldier preys on the weaknesses of his targets in order to overpower them, and he only feels is an unfamiliar sting in the pit of his stomach. He runs his thumb against the texture of the newspaper, along the ridge of his neck and jawbone. The image in in black and white, but it feels as if he is finally seeing in colour for the very first time.

**Author's Note:**

> I still haven't recovered from The Winter Soldier.
> 
> Follow me on tumblr @ custardandfshfingers


End file.
